Conversations

It’s strange to think I’m back at Thursday again. It seems like Monday was yesterday, not three days ago. This week has zoomed past. 


Classes went well. Some students I haven’t seen for weeks turned up today. One girl mentioned that the teacher had yelled at the skippers, but I think that they only attended class this afternoon because some officials from Anhui province were visiting the school today. Most of the kids were extra well behaved today. 


I forgot to write down some classic stories from this week, so I’ll do so now.


During one class, which is mostly filled with girls, a boy explained that the reason that more girls didn’t play basketball was because they “liked to do quiet things”.
As I listened to the male student, I could feel waves of discontentment flowing off the females in the room. I decided to ask, “Ladies, do you like to do quiet things?”
They quickly responded in a shout, “No!!!”
That instantly silenced the boy. Normally, I would have felt bad about embarrassing a student, but I don’t enjoy blatant sexism (especially on Women’s Day), so I let him learn a valuable lesson: don’t speak for females without consulting them first.


After class, one boy came up to me and asked, “Why is America considered the king of basketball?”
I responded, “I don’t know.”
He said, failing to hide his frustration, “I don’t know. Chinese like basketball more than Americans. Why we not better?”
I shrugged, and tried to interject my thoughts, but the boy had other ideas, “We have more people that like basketball. Why aren’t we number one?”
I finally broke into the conversation and asked, “Do you have organized sports teams in high school?”
The boy answered, “No.”
I continued, “No. Chinese students only focus on school. American students often play sports while in high school. It’s very important to our culture.”
The male student nodded, “We don’t have professional help.”
Me, “No, you don’t have a chance to get good. We have teams in both high school and university. It’s a big deal in America.”
The guy replied, “Yes. That’s true.” He waved goodbye, though he seemed a little discouraged by the conversation.


Following another class, two girls came up to me to chat. One of them said, “How can we speak English better?”
I answered, “Practice is important. Listen to native speakers of English and practice speaking.”
One of the girls asked, “How can we learn to speak without an accent?”
I replied, “You probably won’t be able to speak without an accent since you’re learning English after puberty. But if you practice, you can get good at speaking English.”
The other student posed another question, “How do students learn English in America?”
A little confused, I said, “Our English class is like your Chinese class. We read books, talk about them, and write essays.”
The two students nodded and one of them added, “So they memorize pmz?”
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” I queried. 
“Do they memorize poems?”
“No. We don’t do as much memorization as you do in China. We have a lot of discussions. So I might ask a student question and then she or he would answer it.”
The girls both nodded, “Yes, you do ask many questions in class.”


In other news, I edited a couple of essays for a student who is trying to study in the US for college. Remember Amanda? She’s the one I’m helping. She’s currently in Beijing studying at a special school to help her increase her TOEFL score. According to Amanda, I’m proofreading her assignments more closely than her teachers. Though I’m impressed by her English abilities, Amanda does need to work on her persuasive writing skills a bit. I sent her an example of a well argued paper, so maybe that will help.


It’s early, but I’m going to sign off so I can crawl into bed a read for a while before nodding off. Sorry, but the photographer took a day off.

Chinese jokes

Here are a couple of jokes that I heard today:


Student: Why is the number “e” sideways?
Me: I have no idea.
Student: Because it’s never in cash and always in debt.
Student: Why is blue jeans the saddest clotheses?
Me: I don’t know.
Student: Because it is blue.

Another excellent day

‘Twas another fabulous day. I know I say that I lot, but it’s often true. My classes were enthusiastic and I enjoyed meeting with them all. They boys especially seem to enjoy this week’s topic and are quite impressed that I know all that I do about basketball. Sure the students are often noisy, but I think that most of the time they’re so excited about the content that it’s difficult for them to be quiet and listen. They’re very social individuals and they enjoy orally interacting with one another.


I was pleased with myself this morning because I was able to plan most of next week’s lesson about St. Patrick’s Day. Hopefully, it will be interesting for the students (many of them mentioned an interest in learning about other cultures).


There’s not much other news. The weather was a bit warmer today, but I still got a little chilled. We ate noodles for lunch (from Sichuan Noodles) and dinner (from Muslim Noodle Shop), we watched a few more episodes of The Event, and I started a new book called The Hangman’s Daughter. See, I told you there wasn't any earth-shattering news. But I do have some new pictures:

The kleenex gift from No. 2 Middle School

Terrifying Chinese graffiti

Repeat Monday

Then it was Monday. The weekend seemed to fly past, although we did enjoy ourselves. Last night we went over to some friends’ house for dinner and to watch a movie. We brought chicken sandwiches, french fries, drumsticks, and two milk teas. Our friends showed us how to cook some popular local dishes. I’ve been intimidated by cooking Chinese food, but in reality, it’s not that complex to make. The secret is to do the cooking on high heat. 


We saw a Woody Allen movie called Scoop. Normally, I’m not much of an Allen fan, but I did enjoy this particular film. Maybe I was positively influenced by the company.

Nothing terribly exciting happened today. I taught my first two classes of the week, so I tried out the new lesson about March Madness and basketball. I think the students enjoyed the topic, though I did have to kick out two students for talking (I had just finished warning them that I would do it, too...). 


Something heartening also occurred today. Two female students came up to me after class and one of them said, “Your classroom is dirty.”

I responded, “Yes, it is.” And that’s the truth, because no one cleans my room. The students are normally responsible for keeping the room clean and they take turns staying after school to sweep and clean the chalkboard. (Remember, they stay in the same classroom all day, so they feel a connection to the room. I’m an anomaly because I have my own room; my school helpers were worried I would get lost, so that’s why they provided me with my own space.) However, since I only see my students once a week, none of them feel terribly responsible for cleaning, so it quickly becomes a pigsty. 

Back to my story. One of the girls said, “We’ll clean your room for you. It’s our duty and we would like to clean it.”


I was shocked, but thankful. We agreed to meet at 5 o’clock so I could open my room for them. They did a wonderful job of cleaning and I gave them each a pack of gum as a “thank you” present.


We cooked a vegetarian dinner this evening, so we’re feeling healthy. We've also started watching a new TV series called The Event. 

The red bits are firework remnants

The sky is dripping

Sadly there isn’t much exciting news from today. We had a slightly challenging tutoring session (one student snapped at another one for “hogging” our attention) and Jean-Jacques and I are in the process of discussing our goals for the meetings. I remind you again that we’re dealing with a radically different educational system where the students want teachers to talk at them for hours on end, instilling them with wisdom. Well, as you can imagine, neither Jean-Jacques nor I teach in this style, so our world views can clash with those of some of our tutees. (They feel that there are only so many hours in a day and every second must be meaningfully used, not wasted by talking about how one person gets nervous about speaking in front of people.) I have empathy for the students, but I firmly believe that we need to continue running classes the way we have been because it’s a good exercise for the students. The majority of them enjoy our time together, but I think some of them are starting to be less thrilled by the meetings.

Other than that it’s been a relaxing day. It’s misting outside and I’m happy to be inside wearing my comfy pajama bottoms that I bought in Scotland. I read some of a murder mystery I started the other day, took a two hour nap, washed and hung up a load of laundry, and ate a new noodle dish for lunch. This evening we’re going to watch a movie, eat grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner, and probably play a board game on the iPad. It sounds like the perfect way to spend a drizzly Saturday evening. 

Friday night ramblings

Jean-Jacques' green bean mustache

Though difficult to believe, it’s Friday again. Strangely, this week was both short and long. I feel like it should be Friday, but the days seemed to pass quickly. 


My two periods this morning went fairly smoothly. As I’ve mentioned before, some of the students are a little less enthusiastic to attend my class, and have a difficult time being motivated to work on assignments I give. I’ll simply have to step up my discipline a bit. 


This year has definitely helped my classroom management skills. Not only do I have large classes, but many of them don’t speak English very well, are not used to focusing their entire attention on a teacher, keep breaking the same rules (are they testing me to see if I’ll respond differently the seven hundredth time I see a student using a cell phone?), and don’t receive a grade in my class. Plus, the course doesn’t directly help them prepare for the national college entrance examinations, which can be disastrous for me since I’m working in an extrinsically motivated education system. 


Our experience so far has shown us that the English taught here is very different from the English that Americans, English, Scottish, Welsh, South Africans, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders, or Irish use. We’ve discovered that in China, English has become another subject that’s used to test the students’ abilities to answer multiple choice questions. It’s not a creative or fluid subject, with all the complexities that make sense to us. (Example: think of all the different ways you can respond to the greeting, “How are you?”. In Anqing, the only response is this: “I’m fine, sanks.”) English in China has almost been reduced to a mathematical problem that makes sense on paper (if you think about it creatively), but would never be used in a real world circumstance. (Who says that a dish is “mouth-watering and delicious” or “I’m going to relax myself this weekend”?)  For Chinese students, English has become robotic. Here’s a sentence, fill in the correct word from a multiple choice list. Conjugate the highlighted word to fit the sentence. 


Sorry for the detour into EssayTown, which is conveniently located in RantLand. I’ll return to my original story. My students need to be reminded of their responsibilities in my class and I will make it clear to them next week. Sometimes I feel bi-polar because one moment I’m stern Mrs. Têtu who-must-firmly-discipline-a-student and then in the next second I become enthusiastic Mrs. Têtu who-is-bouncing-around-the-room-while-explaining-the-meaning-of-“brag”. It seems to work, though. Maybe I am so unpredictable that I shock the students into paying attention.


I was surprised when sixteen students showed up to my Friday Movie Lunch. Normally I have around five to seven students, so I wasn’t expecting such an impressive turnout. We had fun watching the movie Cars and I only had to stop the movie a few times to explain the plot. 


After I returned home from the Movie Lunch, I crawled into bed and spent most of the afternoon there in a comfortable, but semi-comatose state (or semi-awake state, depending on your world view). Jean-Jacques cooked dinner while I kept him company, we watched the latest episode of The Amazing Race, and we’re in the middle of this week’s Castle. I say in the middle because we had to pause the show to use the bathroom in shifts (that's a plural, mind you). I think our lunch of spicy noodles wasn’t the kindest on our tummies. 


Until tomorrow...

Katie eats something scary

Much has occurred in my life since I last wrote. I’ve taught twelve classes, attended another banquet, and added an item to my Exotic Eats List. In other words, life is back to normal for us in China.


Yesterday (Wednesday) I received a call from a friend asking if we were busy that evening. I asked, “What for?” (Maybe this was rude, but I wanted to know what I was going to be asked to do before committing to do it.)
He replied, “To go to another banquet.”
I answered, “Oh.”
He said, “It’s the tea merchant who drove the van to pick you up when you first arrived. He’s been wanting to host a dinner for a while now, and I finally have time.”
Me, inwardly sighing, “Ok. I’ll check with Jean-Jacques.”


Do you think we refused the invitation? You guessed it, we found ourselves being whisked away to another evening of socializing. There was the usual amount of smoke haze and drunken toasting. In addition to the normal frustrations endured at all banquets, my head was also pounding and the vocal volume of our fellow diners increased in direct proportion to the amount of baijiu they drank, which, in turn, didn’t positively affect my headache. 

However, I couldn’t stay mad long because the Chinese are simply too generous and kind. 
That’s one thing I’ve learned while here -- the Chinese are the most gracious hosts I have ever met (and probably ever will meet). Sure, there’s a lot of spitting, noodle slurping, and shoving in China, but one quickly forgets all about it once you’re in the middle of experiencing Chinese hospitality. Our host last night picked us up at our school (and drove us back), drank tea (not baijiu) with us so we wouldn’t feel uncomfortable, kept filling up our tea cups with fresh water, made sure that we received the first helpings of dishes once they were placed on the table, invited us to his shop for some expensive tea after the meal, and gave us a bag of peanuts and about eight packets of dates to take home with us. Wow! 


The only thing we did in the way of a thank you was to take some pictures with the tea shop owner and his wife. We were told that they are planning to frame the photograph and hang it under a picture of Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin. I’m not sure we’re worthy to put in such a prominent place.


We did get a business card for the tea shop, so we can show a taxi driver the address and find our way back on our own. If anyone has some orders for Chinese tea, let me know and I’ll see what I can do to fill your request.


What exotic dish did I eat last night? Duck tongue. No, I am not exaggerating. I was happily eating some tasty noodles, when a man plopped half a duck bill on my plate. (He had just done the same thing to Jean-Jacques.) I’ll admit that I’ve gotten much more brave when it comes to eating bizarre food, but I almost couldn’t stomach the duck tongue. I had to pry it away from the bill (which still had some hairs in it, by-the-way) and hold the whole thing in my fingers while I took a bitty bite. Was it mouth-watering and delicious (to quote one of Jean-Jacques' students)? Not in the least. I only managed to swallow the one niblet I tried. And I tasted it all night long.

Thankfully, today was excellent. I had to remind many of the students of my expectations (some of them are starting to slack off and not complete the small amount of work that I assign during class; remember, I don’t give homework), but overall we had a good time together. I’ve learned how to provide an action-filled explanation of “deodorant”, I juggled for a bit to explain the word “juggler”, and I’ve been able to successfully make jokes they understand. 


I was a little worried about the class “that has devil eyes”, but they were perfect today. (Some of the trouble makers were busy collecting books for the poor... Yes, you read that correctly. It only happens in China, folks.) We had fun and laughed together, which is good because we all needed it. At the end of the session, I informed them that I was very proud of them and gave them a round of applause that they quickly joined. So it was a great day. 
(The only incident of the period occurred when I took away a kid’s physics homework, grabbed a desk and chair, put them outside of the room, and suggested that he study there. He pleaded for me to give him a second chance, which I did. He was an angel for the rest of time.) 


As I’ve said, it’s been an exciting few days. Hope all is well with everyone!